| The site is a sizeable and dramatic piece of land (260,000 sf) overlooking the Pacific Ocean. At the present time, it is virtually impossible to obtain planning approval from The City of Malibu for any new project, due to the city’s ongoing dispute with the California Coastal Commission regarding the adoption of a local coastal plan. Yet, because the clients’ purchase of the property was accompanied by a permitted set of plans for a generic Mediterranean home, we had another option: these plans could be revised, in this case dramatically, to meet ‘substantial conformance’ with the set of zoning envelopes established by the previously permitted project.
The challenge then was to provide a contemporary design aesthetic within the confines of the permitted plans while providing the following programmatic elements: generous living areas and kitchen, wine cellar, guest quarters, master suite, a children’s wing, gym and home office, all of which are either directly connected to the hillside or have access to roof decks.
Interlude: Ed Ruscha’s 1976 painting, “Malibu + Sliding Glass Doors” reduces the romantic seaside genre to a provocative banality. Glass planes are the start of an idea about mediating the space between the house and the ocean.
The new design is comprised of series of walls that move from the landscape through the house, retaining the earth while supporting the cantilevered volumes. These concrete volumes envelope the specific program elements of eating, sleeping, and living. The interior of the house is compressed between the retaining walls and the glass facade that stands free and slips past the edges of the volumes. This facade system reflects the landscape and retains space. Like mirrored sunglasses the glass facade hides the thoughts and activities of the Michaels. The facade is comprised of fixed reflective glass planes supported from behind by a thin steel frame. An inset operable system comprised of transparent glass is framed by wooden windows and sliding glass doors.
The cantilevered containers are plugged into a shifting circulation spine, connecting the two floors and the children’s rooms to the master suite on the other side of the house. Voids and clerestories puncture the circulation space bringing natural light into the interior volumes. The living space open wide onto the terraces that step down into the landscape, following the glass planes towards the ocean.
If the system of concrete envelopes has a sense of continuity, the interior surfaces have a looser affiliation - they cover floors, walls and ceilings - some soft like carpet, leather, others hard like wood, tile, or stone.
While the house might perform conceptually as a kind of viewing/veiling device, a hinge between seer and sea, perhaps Ruscha’s playful attitude about sliding glass doors is more suggestive: “the whoosh they make sounds like the ocean.”
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